How has burning fuel from using cars, harmed our environment?

Question

Looking for some web site links or just knowledge that you know....

Answer 1

Think of all the gas you've ever put into your car - nearly all of this has disappeared into the atmosphere as exhaust fumes. Now think of the number of vehicles there are - cars, lorries, planes, trains, boats all doing the same thing.

In total hundreds of billions of tons of fuel have been burned producing a mixture of gases and all these gases have floated off into the atmosphere.

Much of these pollutants are greenhouse gases meaning they form a 'blanket' around the planet which traps heat within it - this is what's known as the greenhouse effect and is reason for manmade (anthropogenic) global warming. Many other things have contributed to global warming, transportation is the second biggest human contribution after power generation.

Amongst the other pollutants from vehicles are lead based ones which are harmful to health. In recent years most vehicles have been running on unleaded fuel so as to avoid lead pollution.

Other pollutants are acidic in nature and when in the atmosphere they turn water vapour acidic which then falls as acid rain leading to defoliation and destruction of trees and plants.

In short, when we burn gasoline the result is a cocktail of all sorts of poisonous and damaging chemicals, about the only harmless byproduct is water.

Answer 2

burning of fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide as a byproduct


results

acidification of the oceans, change in ph
CO2 is a major greenhouse gas so it leads to the warming of the earth
(scientists have traced CO2 levels back 7 ice-ages ago about 600,000 yrs and co2 and temperature seem to go hand in hand)

acid rain


Lance is ignorant, but then again most are.... sorry Lance.

One interesting thing to counter act Lances statement..

Ice Ages are cylical meaning they happen like the seasons.
the last Ice Age ended about 12,000 yrs ago.

And for the present time, we should be heading back into an Ice Age.

So it is possible that the only reason were not in an Ice Age is all the anthopogenic practices like burning fuels that are actually keeping off then next Ice Age.

but CO2 levels are higher then ever in their naturally occuring cycle.. This is a FACT.... no way to dispute it

and oceans are becoming more acidic...which is a big deal

Acid rain is a problem, it's the reason why statues that are thousands of years old and have been fine till now. Are starting to dissolve and disintergrate at alarming rates.

If you look Most limestone tomb stones a century old have barley legible writting on them.

CO2 has big effects, just that you and I are very small individuals in this world and we live comfortably. It's easy not to notice the changes, I mean what do you have to compare to, we live a maximum of 100yrs ...

that is such a short time span to get any bearing on the changes our environment is going through.

but if you research, you'll find mountains of information about this.

In Paris 200 scientists from around the world just drafted a 900 page report on Global Warming

it's real

visit the EPA website

or check out the National Priority list

or American Rivers.org

start there...

Answer 3

the carbon dioxide that we create from vehicles, bbq's and lawnmowers is outweighting the oxygen that we have in the air. there is not enough trees to help replenish our oxygen supply as quickly as we need it to. we have harvested alot of these trees to build houses........and thus the cycle starts and everything else follows...

Answer 4

It hasn't, to any great extent.